"I've been through the dark side of hell and back again; journeyed through life with nary a friend. I've laughed and I've cried; I've lived and I've died, and yet each day I'm condemned to do it again and again." Michael Lambrix (death row ~ Florida)

Tuesday, 31 May 2016

Scratching at the Scars of a Shattered Soul

I would argue that the transformative power of a simple mirror is the
foundation for the evolution of self. Looking deep into the image
staring back at us, we are compelled to scratch at the scars of our own
shattered souls and confront truths we want to avoid. From the
beginning of time this has been true. I can only imagine a primitive
version of humankind finding himself crouched down at the muddy edge of a
pond looking deep into his own reflection and questioning who he was
and wanted to be. It was that self-examination that brought about
evolutionary change.

I was barely 16 and out on my own, far away from any “home” I might have
had and struggling to survive on the streets while others my age were
still in school. I found work with a traveling carnival and slept at
night in the tents along the midway that housed the games and
concessions. I was not alone, but only one of many “midway misfits”.
After the show shut down each night and silence blanketed the darkened
grounds, we would emerge from the shadows and congregate in our groups,
each chipping in what we could to buy whatever alcohol or drugs might be
available. As we each indulged in our vice, the past each of us had run
away from would be forgotten. We had survived another day.

One particular cold winter night outside of Chicago, as our little band
of midway misfits broke up, each to stagger away each in their own
direction, I sought warmer shelter. I ventured into the “House of
Mirrors.” I was drunk and stoned, but the surreal experience came to
define that time in my life. Although I knew each mirror was
deliberately made to reflect a distorted image, as I stared I found that
it was I who was so damaged and all I wanted to do was run from that
reflection of who I was.

It would take another 16 years before I found myself in a solitary cell
on Florida´s infamous Death Row, looking deep into a simple plastic
mirror at the man I had become. I could no longer pull away. I had
already been condemned to die years earlier and even come within hours
of being executed (please read: “The Day God Died”).
But it was only then that after years of refusing us any form of mirror
under the pretense that mirrors posed a “security threat”, that
suddenly we were allowed to purchase and possess simple plastic mirrors.
For the first time in many years I found myself staring at the image
looked back at me.

That was over 20 years ago. The experience motivated me to write a
widely published essay “To See the Soul – a Search for Self” (published
in Welcome to Hell by Jan Arriens
as “A Simple Plastic Mirror”) in which I struggle to confront who I
was and who I want to become after realizing I didn´t like the man
looking back at me and I’d wanted to become something better. That
mirror contributed to changing who I was, giving me direction in my
journey through life. I continue to stagger along the path toward my
still unknown destination, as the uncertainty of my fate remains
undetermined.

But what I didn´t know then, and do now, is that with each step of the
journey we continue to grow. To paraphrase the philosopher Friedrich
Nietzsche, “That which does not kill us can only make us stronger.” I
came to embrace the belief that each experience is an opportunity to
grow, and that I alone possess the power to determine how the misery
inflicted upon me might affect me. And being condemned to die at the
hands of man did not deprive me of who I wanted to become.

The poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling became my inspiration as I found myself
cast down into an environment of lost souls. Ones consumed by the hate
I would come to know well, because when all else fails, hate finds a
way to prevail. Each day is a struggle to not allow it to possess my
soul, too. And when I do find myself becoming influenced by the
destructive darkness of hate, I again read these words:

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you –If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting, too –If you can wait and not be tired of waiting, or being lied about, don´t deal in lies –or being hated, don´t give way to hating, and yet don´t look too good, nor talk too wise –If you can dream and not make dreams your master, If you can think and not make thoughts your aim –If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same –If you can bear to hear the truth you´ve spoken twisted by knives to make a trap for fools;or watch the things you gave your life to broken and stoop and build ´em up with worn-out tools;If you can make one heap of all your winnings and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss;And loss and start again at your beginnings and never breath a word about your loss;If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they are gone;And so hold on when there is nothing in you except the will whish says to them “hold on!”If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch;If neither foes or loving friends can hurt you, if all men count with you, but none too much;If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run;Yours is the earth and everything in it, and which is more, you´ll be a man, my son.

Even under normal circumstances, few reach the point in their lives at
which they are compelled to confront who they are, not merely accepting
that they can be something better, but taking it to the next step of
making the conscious effort to evolve into an improved self. For most
of us, we are leaves fallen into a stream, our destiny by defined where
the water might take us with little effort spent changing its course.
Each decision along the way is contained within the boundaries of the
stream as if John Calvin´s definition of pre-destiny (a tenet of the
Presbyterian faith) dictates the direction of our life, each option
(“free will”) limited to that small world we live in.

If a normal life can be compared to flowing peacefully down a stream,
then prison life would be like being cast over a cliff, upon raging
rapids, violently cutting its way through steep canyon cliffs. Unable to
escape nor float downstream, every second of every day you must
struggle not to sink and even one moment of weakness will be your last.

Death Row is no different. Each of us is kept in continuous solitary
confinement, but we are still swept toward our own destruction in those
same white-water rapids. Most become so caught up in keeping their own
head above the water that they no longer search for elusive pods of calm
water hidden in the eddies along the way, and their own survival comes
at the cost of dragging others down in their own attempt to rise above.

As the passing years would patiently teach me, after long ago looking
into that plastic mirror and making the conscious decision to become a
better man than I was, that the image remained incomplete. I couldn´t
have known that by choosing this particular path I would find myself
repeatedly tested. Accepting myself being cast down into an environment
consumed by misery and hate, each day I had to find the strength not to
become part of the very thing I didn´t want to become.

But in this world, I was expected to be a “convict.” Conforming to an
abstract set of values that, while generally written in stone (i.e. –
mind your own business, don´t rat on others, be true to your word,
etc.), were still subjectively defined by those around you meant that
when tested, the choice not to respond as expected would result in a
perverted form of peer pressure. In the eyes of others, you were
reduced to something less than a “convict” and in here, anything less
than a convict makes you a target.

But as long as a man continues to define himself by what others think,
he can never be his own man. This place is its own hell, and I find
myself trapped in a world where doing the right thing is often the wrong
thing to do. I find myself precariously balanced between those two
conflicting worlds, each pulling at me as I hang above an abyss
threatening to consume me. I am not alone. I know of many others who
struggle daily to be better men, yet give into those raging rapids and
become what they perceive to be a “convict.” And for that, their lives
in here become easier, but their inner struggles become harder.

Many years ago I thought in my ignorance that by looking deep down into
theplastic mirror I had discovered my true self. But just as when I
found myself alone in that “house of mirrors,” I know now that what you
think you see in a mirror is not necessarily a true reflection. It
becomes a distortion of what you want to see. People go into the “House
of Mirrors” expecting to see a distorted image.

Now I look into a mirror knowing that when I do, the reflection will be
altered as I consciously scratch away at the scars of a shattered soul.
And it took me many years before I scratched away enough to start to
confront the past that formed me into who I was.

When I wrote “To See the Soul – A Search for Self,” I didn´t realize
just how pathetically superficial that self-examination was. I only saw
the reflection I wanted to see at the time. It was enough to know I
didn´t like the man I was and that I wanted to become something better.

For most of my life I never talked about my childhood or family life
beyond the grossly distorted surrogates I created in my own imagination.
I heard it said once that those who didn´t have a life before prison
create one. Crack-heads become self-proclaimed drug lords, pimps become
players and killers become “convicts.” To run with the big dogs you had
to be willing to become one of them. But few dare to scratch beneath
the surface of their own scarred souls and until they do, they can never
hope to evolve into something more than what they are.

The path I choose to journey down is a solitary one. Often it alienates
me from those I live amongst. When confronted by a perceived wrong,
such as someone “disrespecting” me, or another form of transgression in
this world, I am expected to respond with violence. Anything less makes
me appear as a “coward. ”Those who remain determined to be seen as
“convicts” can never understand that for me and others, being labeled a
“coward” is preferable to a “killer.” It takes a conscious decision to
turn the other cheek and not be reduced to the kind of person we’ve
struggled so hard not to become.

I find my own refuge in books. If I could, I would give every prisoner a
copy of my two favorite books…Dante´s “Inferno,” which provokes a lost
soul to contemplate the consequences or our actions, and Victor Frankl´s
“Man´s Search for Meaning,” which through profound truth teaches that
within each of us is the strength to not simply survive even the most
incomprehensible atrocities, but to overcome them.

As Frankl wrote, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the
last of the human freedoms – to choose one´s attitude in any given set
of circumstances; to choose one´s own way….. “forces beyond your control
can take away everything you possess except one thing: your freedom to
choose how you will respond to the situation … when we are no longer
able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

I no longer keep my mirror taped to my wall. Now I keep it tucked
inside my Bible, so that as I search for strength in the wisdom of the
ages, I have it to look into. And it rests alongside my favorite quotes
from “Man´s Search for Meaning”.

Knowing that I live in a world in which in which hate prevails in the
absence of love and spreads like a cancer, I find my journey defined by
the pursuit of a tangible sense of “love.” It begins with love of self.
One cannot love oneself if he doesn’t like himself, and one cannot
truly love another until they´ve first embraced the love of self. Again,
to quote Victor Frankl:

“For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by
so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The
truth – that love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can
aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret – that human
poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: the salvation of man
is through love and in love.”

Few can begin to comprehend the depth of misery inflicted upon those
condemned to death under the pretense of administering “justice.” Day
after day, month after month, year after year we are relentlessly beaten
down by the inescapable reality that society has found us unfit to
live. We are cast down into the bowels of a beast devoid of mercy and
compassion. Each day is a struggle to find the strength to hope.

Our artificial environment has been methodically structured to break
both body and soul, to erode all sense of hope. To alienate any
pretense of love until all that remains is the flesh they seek to kill.
And few possess the strength, much less the motivation, to rise above
it rather than become one with it.

But again, to quote Victor Frankl, “Life is never made unbearable by
circumstances, but only by a lack of meaning and purpose,” and “those
who have a “why” can bear with almost any “how,” as in some ways
suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.”

I found my “meaning” in that simple plastic mirror so long ago, and have
tried to stay true to the path I chose to follow. That doesn´t mean I
haven´t stumbled and even fallen along the way. I would be the first to
admit that I am far from perfect. But it’s not about being perfect.
It’s about striving to become something better than I once was. And
that in the many years since I found the strength to look into that
first simple plastic mirror, I´d like to think I have become someone
better.

My journey is coming to an end. I know I will soon be put to death.
Knowledge of this weighs heavily on my soul and I fight not to be
overcome by the gross injustice of my conviction and
condemnation.(please check out: www.southerninjustice.net)

But as I look into the mirror, I realize the uncertainty of my fate
remains irrelevant, because in the end, nobody gets out alive. We are
all born condemned to die. And perhaps for the purpose of discovering
who I was, and had the strength to become, it was necessary for me to
follow this particular path. I know that had I not been wrongfully
convicted and condemned to death, I would never have had the opportunity
to find myself in the simple plastic mirror, and subsequently discover
that strength within myself that made me a better man.

I continue to scratch at the scars of my own shattered soul. Scars
remain, but with each scratch I come to understand them better, and
finding strength to grow in spite of an environment intended to
suffocate growth. I have found my meaning. Through the reflection
staring back at me. Even when all else fails, love will prevail.

(end)

NOTE: If you would like to read about Mike´s “actual innocence” case, please check out www.southerninjustice.net If you would like to sign a petition requesting clemency for Mike, please do so at www.save-innocents.comClick here to read a recent story on Mike and his case